KATIE'S BLOG - peniche blog

We are now in Sesimbra, after a ‘short’ day of sailing, around five hours at sea. About 11 miles to go I was so desperate, I even put the death mark on my forehead and hands!  💀👿💗😡    

My death mark

We are sailing!

Yesterday, we were in Cascais (near Lisbon) in a pretty anchorage off some big beaches. To our left was an old castle-like building next to an ugly modern hotel thing, the difference was really surprising. We also saw Mickey and Carl from Bayona on their yacht.

The two buildings side by side

Sailing round the headland

Last week we had a new crew member for eight days, her name was Rachel and she’s really good at following orders! I made some shortbread biscuits with her while Reuben and Mum made something called ‘pumpkin snickadoodle cookies’ out of the inside of mine and Reuben’s Halloween pumpkins.

It was our second day sailing with her when, only a couple of hours until we got there, the Vbox decided to snap, leaving us engineless. Luckily, a boat called ‘Salt’ was near us and towed back to Nazare. It was really fabulously great for me because that meant we wouldn’t be travelling for a week or two until we got it fixed, but really BAD for everyone else.

With Rachel at the bottom of the funicular in Nazare

Personally, I enjoyed nearly every minute of it until, of course, the time came for Rachel (who I had become quite fond of by now) had to leave us. I was truly and utterly heart-broken. And there’s nothing more to say about it. We also had to make the journey to Peniche. Dun, dun, dun!

It wasn’t really rough, but the motion was pretty unbearable, I felt sick the whole way there, but just as much as anything, disappointed not to have any blueberry bon bons to add colour to my sick if it came out. But luckily it didn’t.

The next day we walked out to the headland – it was amazing and I’m glad we went. We had lunch out in a small café and I tried the Portuguese dish Francesinha which was, well…                Different…        A new experience let’s say.

It was two pieces of bread with beef and ham in the middle and cheese on the top, all covered in homemade tomato sauce and chips and egg on the side.

My Francesinha

Looking at the sea from a cave

On the way there, we came across some steps leading down onto a little platform overlooking the wavy sea. We found a little hole in the rock shooting air out, then you’d hear the sea crashing below, silence, then a huge waft of air. Dad put a bottle down it and it fell down onto some ledge or something before shooting out violently and hitting me on the leg, it was really painful!

It was really windy when we finally got there and the sea was looking really mean with waves breaking, and even from the cliff top we could still feel the salty spray on our faces. Where the water had hacked away at the hard rock there were holes and patterns all around us, it was like a maze.

The amazing rocks

The next day we walked along the old city walls to the beach. There were three kite surfers at our end of the beach: 
Mr. Black with the black kite, Mr. Orange with the orange board and Mr. Yellow with the yellow board. Mr. Black was definitely the best, when he surfed over a big wave he would go 20 feet or so in the air! I really wished I could have swapped places with him, it looked so fun!

Walking along the old walls

Mr. Black in the air

The day after we visited the prison museum, there used to be about 2,487 prisoners and only 20 escaped!

The walls of the prison

To be fair, I haven't been feeling half so bad at sea recently, and it's only because we have stopped for a few days and I've been used to being still that it's all a bit of a trouble but otherwise I'm fine.

Me on the bowsprit

               Anyway, in a minute we are going to have chicken risotto for tea so I better finish now.